Visiden Tries It: Project Horizons Chapter 4 · 9:22pm Jun 21st, 2016
Right, let's keep going. The story has three more chapters to strut its stuff before I reach the crisis point in our relationship.
Nopony knew the Overmare,” P-21 muttered. He’d been in a snit all morning, grumbling to himself and giving me sullen looks. Really, was shooting a bunch of radigators so bad? He scowled at every lump of dead grass beside the road. What was he worried about? My E.F.S. would pick up any threats.
I've never encountered radigators in fallout, then again I haven't played every fallout so points for not sticking to in-game monsters. But I would think that giant mutated alligators should have a better introduction and present a bigger threat than just more mooks to bring down.
As for the last bit, he's probably training himself to not rely on machinery that might give out. Proving yet again that he's smarter than you. Which is barely an accomplishment.
P-21 looked at me and then gave a disinterested shrug. “Don’t ask me. There’s nothing in 99 I want to remember.”
Except my name, which is symbolic of my objectification in that vault.
I almost stopped… but fuck it. He was going to be in a bad mood either way. Why’d I have to leave Stable 99 with the pony carrying a whole stable’s worth of issues? Why not U-14? Least then I’d be in the Wasteland with some fine flank.
It is good to see that the gory death of Scoodle has impressed upon Blackjack the gravity of her situation. As such, she has learned to take minor annoyances in stride as they are nothing compared to the harsh reality of daily living in the surface world.
I snorted. “I am not oblivious!” Then I tripped on a chunk of asphalt and went sprawling on my face. Okay, maybe a little oblivious.
If she tripped because she didn't see the chunk of asphalt, then she should have fallen first THEN checked what tripped her before describing the chunk of asphalt.
P-21 sighed. “First, that this ‘Sanguine’ was probably watching the stable before U-21 left it.
Yeah, he's the daedric prince of hedonism. You guys are fucked, possibly literally.
Again with the running plan. Always a running plan. Never a sneaking and avoiding a fight plan,” P-21 whispered as he limped along behind me.
Exactly. Blackjack is thinking like a gamer here, trying to get as much XP and phat lewtz as possible and acting as if she can just load if things get fucked, while P-21 seems to understand that you can win a hundred battles, but you only need to lose one.
I remembered Scoodle mentioning roboponies
This "gotta go through me" narration has been a prevalent annoyance in the story so far. "Scoodle mentioned roboponies" works just as well with fewer words.
So there's a random encounter with a robot which they salvage. It's a dull one-sided affair as have most of the fights so far. I'm starting to suspect that, if you remove all the random encounters, you might be able to cut PH to half its size.
“Huh… I think I prefer raiders. They at least carry loot"
I prefer to kill living ponies so I can loot their dead bodies. A bastion of equinity, this one. There's that gamer thinking.
I hit S.A.T.S. at once and, as before, unleashed three blows on the machine’s head. Fast as I was as I made the attack, the beam proved faster and scorched a line across my neck.
Yawn. Not even a description of the pain. At least tell me how much HP you lost.
All the ponies had dented plates from bullet impacts. “I guess they weren’t made to resist being attacked by some pony with a heavy metal stick.”
Makes sense. A metal plate strong enough to deflect bullets would not be effective against lower-velocity strikes from weapons with multiple points of impact.
Then I noticed the bodies at the door. Not decades or centuries old, these were fresh, pungent, and swollen.
You would smell these first before seeing them. Describe the smell first then have her look for the source. Is her sense of smell that bad? Probably from snorting coke in Vault 99.
Any idea what this is?” I asked, pointing the boxy pistol at the wall. My telekinesis pressed a small button on the handle. With a sharp pop of expanding air, a red bolt of energy shot out and left a singe on the concrete wall. A glance at my PipBuck confirmed: magic beam pistol. I also noted our location: Weather Monitoring Station 4.
Maybe you should consult with your omniscient pipbuck BEFORE fucking around with mysterious devices, genius.
I was amazed to get four shots programmed with the S.A.T.S., and, while the blasts were definitely not as tightly placed as with a normal gun, my luck didn’t seem to care what weapon I shot.
I was amazed to get four shots programmed with the mookslayer, and, while blasts were definitely not as tightly placed as with a normal gun, the author didn't seem to care what weapon I shot.
There, fixed it.
The robot’s red searing beam struck me in the chest, scorching my barding and reminding me to move my ass!
These lasers punch through metal plate, but they have all the effect of cigarette burns on Blackjack. They don't slow her down, they elicit nothing more than a throwaway mention, and they're gone by the next potion chug. She gets hit multiple times throughout this drawn out fight, but they appear to cause nothing more than first degree burns whereas her lasers melt steel.
One wall was dominated by a massive terminal that had clearly seen better days, while a corner held shelves with an automatic pistol and two ammo boxes.
Now, I'm not American. This doesn't take place in America, but Fallout is supposed to take place in America, so I have to ask. Is this a good representation? Do you all just have guns and boxes of ammo lying around everywhere?
"What is it with people shooting me when my guard is down, huh? That’s twice in two days.”
How about not dropping your guard all the time, then?
Since when did my eyes fucking glow?
This is where the end notes fuck the story up. We know this ahead of Blackjack so it's no reveal.
No idea,” he said as I started on my last Sparkle-Cola. Darn things were addictive! Enjoying the warm carroty taste, I glanced back down the hall
Isn't Nuka Cola radioactive? Clearly something you should drink when you're still suffering from radiation poisoning.
The recording was clearly old, but I heard a dull chuckle. “Yeah dude. Rainbow may be hot but, like, you got no chance man. Dude, isn’t she like the spokespony for mare riders? Heh… yeah I hear that. So you check out my score on the last basketball match with monitor one? Shyeah, we kicked tail thanks to yours truly. Hey, what happened…?” Suddenly I could hear a noise with a deep reverberation and a sucking sound that transformed into a roar.
Why would they record this? This isn't from a security camera or whatever, it was on a pony. Why would you record yourself talking about fucking your boss or some high-ranking official?
Damn it! I’d been fine when the bones were just bones. I didn’t want to think of dozens of foals dying slowly of radiation poisoning while someone, somewhere, casually let them die. “How could they?”
Oh no, children died. Reading these fallout stories throw child deaths and rape out there is like watching Miley Cyrus sexing it up. It's not shocking or disturbing. It just gets sad in the long run. It's done too often and with little impact.
Right. And then they sent these volunteers on a peace mission to raiders? If that was incompetence, they deserved an award for the sheer scale of it.
You'd be the expert on incompetence, Blackjack.
The story seems to be blurring the Followers of the Apocalypse and the Enclave. It's a genuinely interesting eyebrow raiser, but I'll have to see how it's executed.
They go into another raider hideout and shoot it up with ease. Good God, somepony please crank up the difficulty level. What is this, Very Easy mode? If I want an endless grind of shooting up raider hideouts, I'll talk to Preston Garvey, thank you very much.
And then Spike does the Three Dog thing. It's pretty dumb, and props to Blackjack for pointing out how dumb it is. Even though she's just as bad.
Footnote: Level Up.
Makes sense that Blackjack is levelling with each chapter. She has the Idiot Savant perk and it's proccing very often. DUHHHHH!
New Perk: Friend of the Night - Your eyes adapt quickly to low-light situations.
Maybe change that to "Near-invulnerability to Energy Damage" because that's what you demonstrated in this chapter.
Well, at least I'm not the only person you beat with your criticism stick for this.
I think it was already said in the comments for these blogs, but Blackjack's stupidity might be the result of 200 years of inbreeding in the Stable. No excuse for the meter-thick plot armor though.
Also, ever gave any thought to whether the Equestrian Wasteland itself makes any sense? All that gore and raiders and whatnot? Post-apocalypse stories generally do a piss poor job explaining why society turns into "every man for himself" after the world goes boom, even though real life seems to suggest otherwise. Fo:E, in my opinion, is an even worse offender, since we are talking about these cute little ponies carving each other up for no adequately explained reasons.
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Well, we need to look at context as well. Consider that the world of Fallout was highly neurotic before the Great War. This was a society that thought drinking radioactive cola was a good idea. This was the military that thought that the best way to fight a battle was to build a giant robot that chucks nuclear bombs like stones. Nuclear apocalypse could not have improved their mental state. And that's not considering Vault-Tec's shenanigans. It might be different for the Equestrian Wasteland, but I'm willing to consider that similar situations apply.
Also consider that raiders and other every-man-for-himself psychos are at the lowest rung of the post-apocalypse ladder. People do organize and rebuild in the face of nuclear holocaust and these organized groups always end up the dominant forces. A large raider gang is no match for the Brotherhood of Steel, or the Enclave, or the NCR, or the Institute, or even Caesar's Legion. They're probably not even that many. The only reason there's so many in the game is because you need low level fodder to grind for XP.
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Ah, so the explanation is "everyone was already kooky"?
I guess that works. Still has very little credibility in MLP, which wants you to assume this happened after the events of the show instead of a fully alternate universe.
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Kooky as fuck. You would be if you were stuck in the 50's for hundreds of years. Come on, let's power our cars with nuclear fission so a ten-car pile up in the highway can turn into fucking Chernobyl.
I just consider all Fallout Equestrias as AU to spare my mind.
I can only speak for the New England region of the states. Having been raised in the rural farmlands of Vermont I was introduced to firearms at an early age. Not your stereotypical Murican assault rifles, but just a simple bolt action hunting rifle and a 12 gauge. The weapons and ammunition were stored in a locking gun cabinet, to help maintain the weapon and keep it from being accidentally misused.
Vermonters are pretty serious about gun safety, as we are practical lot. When you combine that attitude with the small population of the state, we have one the lowest gun violence rates in the entire country.
So I would like to think that most people have the common sense to keep dangerous weapons locked away until they are needed. But gun control is a pretty complex issue in this country, so no simple answers here I'm afraid. :/
well i can only speak as a southern country boy but i do have my glock pistol in the nightstand with a box of ammo in the closet.